Buckling analysis of elastic plates by boundary element method

This study developed a more general boundary element formulation, which allowed for wide variety of boundary conditions and arbitrary planar shapes, to the investigation of the onset of instability of elastic plate. The formulation of the problem was strictly in terms of boundary integrals so as to eliminate any discretization of domain integrals. This proposed approach placed no restrictions on the nature of the distribution of the in-plane forces within the plate. In this study, the boundary integral formulation was just in terms of the three displacements of the plate's middle surface. This eliminated the need to introduce a stress function to handle the general distributive and variable nature of the in-plane forces so as to keep the introduction of loading to just in-plane known forces or displacements acting on boundaries of the plate system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.